Traffic Circle

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - As Memorial Day weekend bears down on this popular Cape May County resort, where the population increases tenfold on summer weekends, the highlight of the tourist season may already have occurred. The Route 52 Causeway, that once-dreaded stretch of stressful driving between here and Somers Point, is fully reopened, with wider lanes, no drawbridges, and a full-length bicycle and hiking path. All four lanes of the 2.8-mile north-south route - two in each direction - were back in business this week, marking the near-conclusion of the six-year, $396 million Department of Transportation rebuilding project.

Since 1933, it has been nothing less than 360 degrees of peril and panic to even the most steely nerved of South Jersey motorists. At the convergence of five roads that have grown over the years into major arteries, it just sits there, like a wart. But the end of the Ellisburg Circle is just around the bend. Road crews began work last Monday on cutting out the treacherous traffic circle, which ties up traffic and vexes close to 70,000 motorists a day. And this Monday, officials from the state Department of Transportation (DOT)

The lunch-time traffic in the Ellisburg Circle was doing the Jersey Weave. It's just a dart to the left and a dodge to the right, a step on the pedal and then pull up tight. Shake your fist in the air and then slide out right. The pundits out front of Ponzio's diner in Cherry Hill were trying to figure out whether there was any choreography to this chaos. Put simply: Who has the right of way? "I don't know," said Barbie Scibal of Linwood. "The standing order is to keep moving.

Dinosaurs. Disco. DOS. At their peak, these relics ruled the world, only to be replaced with more efficient models. They either needed too much energy, required too much work, or, at the very least, looked just plain silly. The New Jersey traffic circle never stood a chance. It has been announced that the Collingswood Circle in Camden County is headed for the extinction list, to be replaced by 2006 via a $10 million project that will include an intersection with traffic lights.

A state plan to eliminate the Collingswood traffic circle, reduce flooding, and do other construction work along Route 130 does not guarantee a buyout for residents whose homes are consistently flooded. Officials from the state Department of Transportation laid out their plan Tuesday night at a meeting in the cafeteria of Collingswood High School before a crowd of about 70 people. A representative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was also at the meeting and spoke with residents afterward.

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - The $400 million project to replace roadway and bridges on the busiest way in and out of this Cape May County resort has been a delicate balance since it began in summer 2006. The New Jersey Department of Transportation couldn't just close down the Route 52 Causeway, which as many as 40,000 cars use on a busy summer weekend, until the end of the work, scheduled for mid-2012. At the same time, workers had to quickly and safely replace four bridges (including two notorious drawbridges)

Traffic engineers recommended to the Medford Council last night that improvements be made to the Route 70 traffic circle to ease tie-ups. Earlier this summer, the council requested that traffic consultant George Horner study the Medford circle, at the intersection of Routes 70 and 541. The council said Mayor Paul Long wanted the study's results to be made known to the state Department of Transportation in an effort to secure improvements at...

Do you often feel like you're going around in circles every time you cross the Walt Whitman or Ben Franklin bridges? Don't worry - it's not you. It's New Jersey. For too long, the state was the traffic circle capital of the country. But now Trenton is trying to straighten things out for you. From a peak of 67 traffic circles statewide in the 1970s, the Garden State is now down to 29, according to Department of Transportation spokesman John Dourgarian. And in two months, it should be one fewer than that, with the completion of the project that will eliminate the Medford Circle, scheduled for Feb. 7. That $3.1 million project, which has been under way since last spring, will make the traffic circle at Route 70 and County Route 541 only a memory.

PACHYDERM PACKS 'EM IN WHILE PAINTING UP A STORM She's a Dumbo Dadaist. A pachyderm Picasso. She's Renee the painting elephant - and yes, she works for peanuts. As part of a Toledo Zoo program to keep animals' minds sharp, Renee has been painting solo for about a decade. On Wednesday, she teamed up with Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid for a collaborative effort. "Wow!" said 10-year-old Billy Abrams, watching from the edge of the exhibit. "I can't believe it. An elephant painting.

It is an elegant little structure, a white masonry cottage-looking sort of thing with angled roof reaching toward the sky, and a fireplace chimney on either end. And of all places, it sits on the Collingswood traffic circle. Over the years, it has lived as a number of different entities, beginning its life in the 1920s as a "Pure Oil gas station," in the words of a state historical consultant. Currently, it is simply Wayne's Auto Sales, at Route 130 and Park Avenue. But the state Department of Transportation's (DOT)

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - As Memorial Day weekend bears down on this popular Cape May County resort, where the population increases tenfold on summer weekends, the highlight of the tourist season may already have occurred. The Route 52 Causeway, that once-dreaded stretch of stressful driving between here and Somers Point, is fully reopened, with wider lanes, no drawbridges, and a full-length bicycle and hiking path. All four lanes of the 2.8-mile north-south route - two in each direction - were back in business this week, marking the near-conclusion of the six-year, $396 million Department of Transportation rebuilding project.

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - The $400 million project to replace roadway and bridges on the busiest way in and out of this Cape May County resort has been a delicate balance since it began in summer 2006. The New Jersey Department of Transportation couldn't just close down the Route 52 Causeway, which as many as 40,000 cars use on a busy summer weekend, until the end of the work, scheduled for mid-2012. At the same time, workers had to quickly and safely replace four bridges (including two notorious drawbridges)

Now you see it. Now you don't. The winter storm that roared in last weekend with a record December snowfall vanished in yesterday's rain, swelling creeks and closing some roads, mostly in New Jersey. Just one week after two feet of snow fell on some areas, the Garden State was being soaked, with about an inch or more expected in most areas. The rain began falling Christmas night and was forecast to continue through this morning. But with temperatures soaring into the 50s at Philadelphia International Airport, "it's not so much the rain but all the snow out there melting" that's causing flooding, said Roy Miller, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Once a remote Pinelands town, Evesham now has main roads clogged with traffic and rimmed by strip malls and shopping centers. Its population has more than doubled in the last three decades to 46,000, making it Burlington County's most populous town. The community's developable land, like that of many South Jersey suburbs, is built out. But local leaders see opportunity in a recently launched project to erect an overpass in the place of the Marlton Circle at the heart of town, a move expected to smooth out traffic flow and reduce accidents at the intersection of Routes 70 and 73. They have hired a firm to gather and analyze input from residents under a process called "visioning" to help determine what Evesham could become and the kinds of planning and development the township should encourage.

One of South Jersey's most dangerous intersections is set to be transformed after state and local officials broke ground on a $63 million project yesterday. The project would eliminate the Marlton Circle, which links Routes 70 and 73. Legendary for its congestion, the circle is traveled daily by 100,000 drivers, from commuters to vacationers en route to the Shore. The intersection has between 150 and 175 traffic accidents yearly, according to a state Department of Transportation spokeswoman.

There's a memorable scene in National Lampoon's European Vacation in which Clark Griswold, his wife and kids are hopelessly stuck in a traffic circle in London. Griswold, trying to make the most of a miserable situation, points out a pair of famous landmarks to his children each time he completes another frustrating turn around the circle: "Hey, look, kids. There's Big Ben, and there's Parliament. " Hilarity ensues. Phillies pitchers Jon Lieber, Brett Myers and Cory Lidle feel they've been stuck in the same circle.

It was a typically straightforward kid's question to a parent. "My cousin in Holland can play in the street, and I cannot. Why is that?" Keane te Velde, 6, of Wayne, wanted to know. This was one time a parent, Keane's dad, Bert, had a straightforward answer: Drivers gone wild. Cars flying down residential streets far in excess of the official 25-m.p.h. speed limit are a major traffic problem for many homeowners and police. Simply increasing enforcement is not feasible - there are not enough officers, and serious crime takes priority.

Once the roads where daring teenagers tried to prove their driving skills and which jittery out-of-state motorists just tried to avoid, the traffic circles of South Jersey are gradually becoming extinct. The list of vanishing concrete-and-grass dinosaurs is long and memorable: the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, the Race Track and the Ellisburg in Cherry Hill, the Maple Shade and the Marlton in Burlington County. Now, the Collingswood Circle. Under a four-year plan funded by the federal government and administered by the state, the circle is to be replaced by traffic-signal access on the two main arteries that connect there: Route 130 and Route 30, also known as the White Horse Pike.

State transportation officials yesterday introduced a proposed $2.7 billion capital plan for next fiscal year that contains money for several major local projects, including the overhaul of the Route 42/I-76/I-295 interchange in Bellmawr. There also is funding for the replacement of a pedestrian bridge over Route 38 in Cherry Hill, and the elimination of the Collingswood, Berlin and Marlton circles. The spending plan, slightly larger than the current year's and the largest in state history, includes $1.6 billion for roads and bridges in the fiscal year starting July 1. An additional $1.1 billion is earmarked for transit projects.

Long-awaited improvements to the intersection of Interstate 295 and Route 38 in Mount Laurel are moving forward, after all. So are plans to get rid of the oft-cursed Marlton and Collingswood Circles and replace them with signal intersections. And work is proceeding on a project meant to finally clean up the maze drivers now must navigate to get through the intersection of I-295, I-76 and Route 42. Despite earlier warnings that an impending transportation funding crisis would mean massive cuts, a draft report released yesterday indicates that spending on road and transit projects will not be curtailed over the next two years.